A Potted History of Sudeley Castle and some thoughts on the people who lived there (guest post by Judith Arnopp)

Today I'd like to welcome Judith Arnopp, author of many wonderful historical novels, who is introducing her most recent book, Intractable Heart:  The Story of Katheryn Parr.  She has prepared a most interesting post about the history of Sudeley Castle, the last home of the queen who survived Henry VIII.

 Besides this tale about the woman who was the last of Henry VIII's six wives, Judith has written two other novels set in Tudor times,  The Kiss of the Concubine:  A Story of Anne Boleyn, and The Winchester Goose:  At the Court of Henry VIII.  She is also the author of other books set in the British Isles in earlier times:  Peaceweaver, The Forest Dwellers, and The Song of Heledd.  All are available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble (see buy links below).

Judith Arnopp

Here's a little biographical information, in Judith's own words:

I live on a smallholding in West Wales with my husband, John.  We used to do the whole self sufficiency thing but ill health put a stop to that and now we just care for our daughters elderly pony and enjoy our naughty Jack Russell, Bryn.

My greatest loves have always been writing and history.  Since I was very small I have had a book in one hand and a pen in the other. These days I am able to write the sort of books that I love to read. Historical settings with a strong female lead. 

A Potted History of Sudeley Castle and some thoughts on the people who lived there.

      Near Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, a little north of Cheltenham, lies Sudeley Castle. A comparatively small place in the scheme of things, set against the backdrop of the Cotswolds. Sudeley is and has been many things; today it is a family home, a beautiful garden, a historic jewel, and the last resting place of an English queen.

      Sudeley Castle is steeped in history and was first mentioned in a 10th century charter. King Ethelred hunted deer in the park and later, when the castle passed to Goda, her distant relationship to William the Conqueror, saved it from Norman take over.

      Sudeley remained in the hands of Goda’s family until the reign of Henry V when the castle was gifted to Thomas Boteler in way of repayment for his action in the war with France. It was Boteler who began to transform Sudeley into an enviable home, enlarging and updating the existing fabric of the building to create a place fit for royalty.

Sudeley Castle

      When the Lancastrians were defeated and Edward IV took the throne the Boteler family were forced out and Sudeley’s new owner was no other than the king’s brother, Richard of Gloucester, later King Richard III of car park fame.

      When the tables turned again and Richard was defeated at Bosworth, Henry VII took it over, bestowing it on his loyal uncle Jasper Tudor. After Jasper’s death Sudeley once more became crown property.

      Henry VIII visited once with Anne Boleyn. They met with Thomas Cromwell there to discuss the reformation of the monasteries and took a keen interest in the Blood of Christ housed at nearby Winchcombe Abbey. At this time the castle was run down and unoccupied for much of the time.

Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley

Katheryn Parr

      On his accession to the throne Edward VI made his uncle, Thomas Seymour, Lord of Sudeley and after his marriage to Katheryn Parr, Seymour and his new wife made their home there.

       The Seymours implemented many improvements and Katheryn took great care in choosing the décor of the nursery for their expected child. Unfortunately, to Thomas Seymour’s sorrow, Katheryn died scarcely a year later, having given birth to a healthy daughter, whom they named Mary.

      With Thomas’ ward, Lady Jane Grey, acting chief mourner Katheryn was laid to rest in St Mary’s church adjacent to the castle. Today visitors to Sudeley can view a love letter and portrait gifted to the queen by her husband.

The church at Sudeley Castle

      Katheryn’s step daughter and friend, Elizabeth Tudor, later Queen Elizabeth I, visited Sudelely on three occasions during her reign. It is easy to imagine her walking in the garden, remembering her stepmother, recalling conversations, small personal details of their shared life that are now lost to history.

      Sudeley’s history doesn’t stop with the Tudors. During the civil war Prince Rupert made the castle his headquarters, and Charles I stayed there for a time during the campaign to take Gloucester.

      During the course of the war Sudelely passed back and forth between Royalist and Parliamentarian hands until Parliament ordered the ‘slighting’ of Sudeley making the house indefensible. The roof was removed, and the rest of the building fell swiftly into decay. The fine worked stone was quarried by locals until the grand castle became nothing more than an attractive romantic ruin. For the next two hundred years it was left to the mercy of the elements, a trysting place for lovers, or a hideaway for thieves.

      In 1782, Katheryn Parr’s grave was rediscovered. The lead casket was opened the body found within reported to be 'uncorrupted'. She was reinterred in 1817 by the Rector of Sudeley and a plaque copied from the original inscription on the lead coffin placed upon it. Today there is an effigy on the tomb but this was made in Victorian times.

Tomb of Katheryn Parr

      Sudeley remained in elegant decay until the nineteenth century when it was bought by two brothers, John and William Dent, who embarked upon a restoration project. They employed architect Sir Gilbert Scott to restore the chapel. The walls and large parts of the castle were restored. Finally Lady Emma Dent spent almost fifty years putting the finishing touches, filling Sudeley with fine art and historical artefacts.

      Yet, of all the people mentioned in this potted history; the Lords, the ladies, the kings, the politicians; it is Katheryn’s memory that lingers. Visitors flock there, not just to see a splendid house and a magnificent garden; they go there because of Henry VIII’s last queen, Katheryn Parr.

      The Tudor style parterre is only a reconstruction but, although Katheryn may have gone it is easy to imagine her there, inhaling the scent of the flowers, the kiss of summer rain on blush pink petals.

      While you move quietly between the roses, or pass through the old yew hedge, you can imagine a footstep on the gravel behind you, the sweeping red skirts of her kirtle as she joins you. And as she follows you around the flowerbeds, you may feel the brush of her hanging sleeves.

You can learn more about Katheryn and the sort of woman she may have been in my book Intractable Heart: The story of Katheryn Parr. Click here to buy (Amazon.co.uk) or here (Amazon.com, US).

***

Many thanks to Judith for that fascinating history!  To learn more about Judith and her work, visit her website, her blog, or see all her books on Amazon.


Images in this post:  Pictures of Sudeley Castle and of the church at the castle are both licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, the former to Gordon Robertson, the latter to Jason Ballard.  The picture of Katheryn Parr's tomb is licensed to TudorQueen6 via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  The portraits of Thomas Seymour and Katheryn Parr are in the public domain due to expiration of copyright.

Indentured servants - the backbone of the colonies (guest post by Anna Belfrage)

 

Revenge & Retribution is the sixth book in Anna Belfrage's time slip series featuring time traveller Alexandra Lind and her seventeenth century husband, Matthew Graham.  The series began in Scotland, but by now has arrived in the New World, with new adventures ahead for Alex and Matthew.  Their life together thus far has been turbulent and eventful, but as the book blurb says, “nothing in their previous life has prepared them for the mayhem that is about to be unleashed upon them.” 

It's my great pleasure to host Anna's guest blog today as part of her launch of Revenge & Retribution.  Anna has won legions of fans for the books in the Graham series, two of which have been awarded the B.R.A.G. (Book Readers Appreciation Group) Medallion.  Two have been nominated (and one is on the final short list) for the 2014 RONE Award (Reward of Novel Excellence), to be presented by the Romance Novel Convention.

She is also a blogger par excellence – my personal favorite blogger, in fact, both for her lively and witty historical posts, and for her wise and compassionate philosophical and personal posts, many of which have moved me deeply.  And to think that she can pull all of this off in several languages...  I'm in awe.  I think you'll enjoy her post, containing interesting background information, and the excerpt, which is from an earlier volume in the series (Like Chaff in the Wind).

Anna Belfrage

Here's Anna, in her own words: 

I was raised abroad, on a pungent mix of Latin American culture, English history and Swedish traditions. As a result I'm multilingual and most of my reading is historical- both non-fiction and fiction. Possessed of a lively imagination, I have drawers full of potential stories, all of them set in the past. For years I combined a challenging career with four children and the odd snatched moment of writing. Luckily, children grow up, and now I spend most of my free time at my writing desk attempting to decipher the squiggled ideas I've jotted down over the years. Every now and then I succeed. I was always going to be a writer. Now I am - I have achieved my dream. Want to know more? Visit the author's website at: www.annabelfrage.com

Indentured servants – the backbone of the colonies 

 

Let’s face it; the first English attempts to set up a successful colony in the New World failed dismally. That first outpost of English culture, Roanoke, mysteriously disappeared. The proud little settlement of Jamestown suffered through starvation and indigenous attacks. In general, people who went to the colonies in search of a better life ended up dead, and for some odd reason this made it difficult to recruit new colonists.

Without people to work the land and expand the English dominion, the Colony of Virginia was pretty much doomed, so I suspect the directors of the Virginia Company perked up substantially when someone came up with the bright idea to use indentured servants to populate their land

The practise of indenture had been around for centuries. In essence it was a contract whereby one person voluntarily entered the service of another person for a stipulated period of time. In general, any payments for the service were paid out in arrears, which meant an indentured servant who absconded could not claim on his back pay.

The system set up in Virginia was somewhat different. Someone had to assume the cost of transporting the servant across the sea, and so rules were set in place whereby landowners in the colony could bring over servants at their own expense and receive up to 50 acres in compensation for their efforts. The indentured servant was compelled by contract to work off his debt for transportation and would at the end of his period of service receive some further compensation – plus some land. The problem with this little set up was that the need for indentured labour exceeded the demand – most people were reluctant to cross the sea to an unknown wilderness from which they might never return.

If people didn’t queue up for the fantastic opportunity of expanding their horizons at no cost but their hard toil, maybe some light coercion would help, and what better way to achieve this than by snatching people off the street and have them set their cross to a document they didn’t understand? Quite a number of people were carried overseas against their will, and once on the other side there was very little they could do but submit to the inevitable and work off their years.

To further swell the ranks of available labour, the powers that were quickly realised that deporting people was an excellent way of delivering able bodied men to the struggling colonies while ridding the kingdom of such undesirables as protesters in general and criminals. During the first eighty years of its existence, the Colony of Virginia received regular complements of deported people, very many of whom were Scots who clung to the Scottish Kirk, refusing to kowtow to the Anglican faith.
Whether forced or voluntary, the life of an indentured servant was no walk in the park. For a woman, there was the constant risk of being raped – these were societies with a chronic shortage of women – and should she become pregnant her term of service would be extended. The men ended up in the fields, disposable beasts of burden that were often worked until they dropped.

A disobedient (or “wilful”) servant was punished – in some cases so severely as to permanently maim the servant.  Trying to run away was a serious offence that could lead to beating so brutal the person in question died, and on top of this the reluctant immigrants had to cope with food shortages and unknown ailments. On average, four out of ten indentured servants died in Virginia during the seventeenth century. No wonder the colony had problems recruiting them!

Life in the colonies – both as an indentured servant and as a settler – play an important part in my series The Graham Saga. My male protagonist, Matthew Graham, is a devout Presbyterian, a veteran of the Commonwealth armies and a man who initially at least tends to see the world as black or white. Which is why I gifted him with Alex Lind, an opinionated modern woman who had the misfortune (or not)  of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, thereby being dragged three centuries back in time to land concussed and badly singed at an astounded Matthew’s feet.

In the second installment of The Graham Saga, Like Chaff in the Wind, Matthew is one of the unfortunates who are sold as indentured servants to Virginia. The experience leaves him scarred for life, and some aspects of his life as a slave come back to haunt him in the recently released (and at times excessively exciting) sixth book of the saga, Revenge and Retribution. However; first things first, so below is an excerpt from Like Chaff in the Wind, giving some insight into Matthew’s experiences in Virginia. I hope you enjoy it!

    Five unbearable days, and on the afternoon of the sixth day he was so tired that he accidentally upended the sled, tipping the load of tobacco plants into the dirt. Jones flew at him. 

    “Fool! Look at what you’ve done!”

    Matthew got to his feet, an effort involving far too many protesting muscles. His shoulders were permanently on fire, the harness had left broad, bleeding sores on his skin, and no matter how he tried to use his worn shirt as padding, the sores deepened and widened, a constant, flaming pain.

    “I’ll just load them back.” He bent to pick up an armful. His arms were clumsy with weariness, and it took far too long to reload the sled, with Jones an irate, vociferous spectator. Matthew leaned forward into the straps, bunching his thighs. Dear Lord! He couldn’t budge the load, the leather cutting even deeper into his lacerated skin. He tried again, and still the sled wouldn’t move. Matthew looked back across his shoulder to find Jones sitting on the sled.

    “Go on,” Jones sneered, “get a move on.”

    “You’re too heavy,” Matthew said, “you can walk.”

    Jones raised a brow. “Of course I can. But now I want you to pull.”

    Matthew felt his pulse begin to thud. Wafting curtains of red clouded his vision.
“I’m a man, aye? I’ll work as you tell me to, but you can move of your own accord, fat though you may be. I won’t be your yoked beast, I’m a man.” There was absolute silence around him, his companions staring at him with a mixture of admiration and exasperation.

    Jones stood up and moved towards him. “That’s where you’re wrong, Graham. You’re no man, not here, not now. You’re a slave, a beast to be worked until you’re no use.” He looked at Matthew expectantly, his hand tightening on the handle of his crop.

    Matthew knew he should back down, grovel and mumble, but inside of him the fire grew, red hot rage at the man in front of him, at his traitorous brother, and the injustice of it all.

    “I told you. I’ve never done anything wrong. I’m a free man.”

    Jones laughed. “Free? Then why are you still here? Why aren’t you on a ship back home?”

    “You know why! I have no money.”

    “And we own you, until you can pay yourself free, we own you.”

    “Nay, no one owns me. I’m a free man.”

    “And I tell you you’re but a slave,” Jones hissed.

    Matthew punched him straight into the face, having the distinct pleasure of hearing the cartilage in Jones’ nose crack. That was really the last thing he observed clearly, then it was all hands and feet, and the sting of the leather crop. He heard Jones call men to him and Matthew had the shirt torn from his back, he was thrown face down onto the ground and then there was the snap of leather that came down time and time again on his bared skin. One of his arms was twisted up behind his back, and in his ear he heard Jones’ heavy breathing.

    “So, what are you?”

    “A free man,” Matthew gasped. The pressure on his arm was tearing at his tendons.

    “What are you?”

    Bend! Alex shrieked in his head, for God’s sake Matthew, bend. But he didn’t want to, he had to salvage some pride, and the pain in his shoulder increased to the point where he knew it would soon be dislocated.

    “What are you?” Jones hissed again, throwing his considerable weight against Matthew’s trapped arm. Matthew groaned. Please! Alex cried, please, Matthew, for me. Don’t let him maim you for life, my love, please! In his fuddled state Matthew wasn’t sure if she was here for real, or if it was a hallucination, but the despair in her voice rang through his head.

    “I’m a slave,” Matthew mumbled, closing his eyes so that he might still see Alex, not the red earth an inch from his nose.

    “What? I didn’t hear you.”

    “I’m a slave,” Matthew mumbled again.

    “Say it out loud.” Jones heaved Matthew to his feet. “Look at all the men before you and say it.” To his everlasting shame, Matthew did as he was told.

    “I am a slave,” he said, repeating it time and time again until Jones released him to tumble to the ground.

    He lay where he had fallen, and around him he heard the sound of people moving off, leaving him to lie unaided. No one dared to touch him, lest Jones should vent his anger on them as well, and Matthew found himself staring at his hand, so close to his face. He didn’t want to move. He no longer wanted to live.

    “Please let me die. Sweetest Lord, just let me die.” He closed his eyes, and in his mind he saw Hillview, he saw a wee lad running up the lane to meet him, and there she was, laughing and crying at the same time, her skirts bunched high as she flew towards him, and he knew that of course he couldn’t die. He owed it to Alex to stay alive; he owed it to himself.

***

Thank you, Anna!  I appreciate your including this blog as a part of your book launch festivities, and I wish you all the best with this new book!

All of Anna’s books are available on Amazon US and Amazon UK

For more information about Anna Belfrage and her books, visit her website!

For a somewhat more visual presentation of The Graham Saga, why not watch the book trailer?

Invoking the Muses

After making an exhaustive study of what's selling and what's not in historical fiction (by which I mean I looked at some Amazon reviews, read a few Facebook posts, and took a look at my own Author Central page), I have come to a conclusion.

To wit, there is Absolutely No Point in continuing to write what people don't want to read.  I am, therefore, embarking on a project to write the most salable historical novel that has ever been written, in which I propose to invoke pretty much every cliché I can think of.  And I intend to share the results with you, my faithful blog readers.

To begin, I did what all writers must do -- I invoked the Muses.  This was only a partial success.  Calliope said that in the current publishing climate she had to be very selective, but she wished me luck finding a muse who would be a better fit with my project; I got an autoreply from Clio; Euterpe's assistant said she was not taking unsolicited requests; Melpomene had to attend a funeral; Thalia just laughed off my request; and Erato sent regrets, though she did recommend the reasonably-priced services of her sister Errata, who's taking over the position of muse of Copy Editing from Apostrophe, who is on leave after multiple relocations. 

I did manage to reach Hyperbole, muse of Marketing, and Monotone, muse of Publishing, though, so all was not lost. 

Hyperbole, contemplating Twitter feed

Monotone, muse of Publishing

Both of them were overflowing with enthusiasm.  First they tried to convince me to write about Tudors, and I had to break it to them that I don't know anything about Tudors, and the closest I could come would be Florence in the13th century.  Monotone kept insisting I could just use Wikipedia, but eventually I prevailed.

Next, the question of a title came up. 

“It's got to be The Queen's something-or-other,” said Monotone, and Hyperbole nodded.

“Or if you can't do that, it's got to be The Something-or-other's Wife,” she added.

“This is Florence in the 13th century.  There weren't any queens,” I told them.

Monotone scoffed.  “It's the middle ages, isn't it?  Of course there were queens!”

“Queens that everyone's heard of,” Hyperbole chimed in.

“Name me a medieval Italian queen that you've heard of,” I challenged her.

Hyperbole looked blank.  Monotone examined her fingernails, humming to herself.

“See?  No queens.”

“Whyever not?  How can you hold a middle ages without queens?!?  What do they put on their covers, for chrissake?”

“Florence was an anarcho-syndicalist commune,” I explained.

Four eyebrows shot up.  “Oh, really?” they said in unison.

“Well, no.  Not exactly.  But it was a commune -- nary a queen in sight.  Except maybe an occasional Queen of the May.”

A moment of silence ensued. 

“Well, okay, then, how about somebody's wife?” said Hyperbole.

“I was thinking of writing about Dante's great love and inspiration, Beatrice,” I said, watching them for a reaction.

“The Poet's Wife?  I dunno – truth be told, it doesn't pull me in.”

“She wasn't his wife, she was the woman he loved.  She married a banker.”

“The Banker's Wife is right out,” Monotone said firmly.  “We just put out a memoir by that title.  Rushed it out the door to take advantage of the latest financial crisis.  But maybe we could go with The Poet's Mistress.  It's not great, but it's better than The Poet's Wife.”

“Well, she wasn't exactly his mistress, actually,” I said, not quite liking where this was going.

“But surely they did have a relationship,” protested Hyperbole.

“Well, yes – he swore to write about her as no one had ever written about a woman before, and he made her immortal, and she symbolized all sorts of stuff, and he made sure her name will never be forgotten.”

“But they did, um, Have A Relationship, didn't they?” Hyperbole persisted.

“She greeted him courteously on the street,” I began, but before I could go on, they both groaned.

“Are you sure you can't come up with an Italian queen?”  Monotone's voice had taken on a wheedling tone.

“Not before 1861.”

Hyperbole turned to Monotone.  “Is 1861 trending?” she asked.

“Not in Italy.” 

“Let's wait till later to figure out the title,” I suggested, and they both reluctantly agreed.  “So I can do Beatrice?”

“Sure you can,” said Monotone.  “Only, we'll have to come up with another name for her.”

“Another – but why??” 

“Nobody will pronounce it right.  They'll say BEE-a-triss, not Bay-ah-TREE-chay,” Hyperbole explained. 

“Her nickname was Bice –“ I began, but Monotone interrupted me.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no.  BEE-chay is not what people are going to say when they see that.  They're going to rhyme it with mice, and spice, and lice, and dice.  Not with eBay.”

“But everybody knows she's Beatrice!”

“No, they don't,” said Hyperbole patiently.  “Hardly anyone has a clue she even existed.  We need to give her a name that people can relate to.  How about Daenerys?”

I was going to have to put my foot down.  “I am not calling Beatrice 'Daenerys.'”

“Arya?  Arya would be nice.”

“No!  It has to at least be something Italian,” I wailed.

The two muses looked meaningfully at each other.  Then they turned back to me.

“There, there, dear,” said Hyperbole soothingly, and Monotone reached out and patted my hand.  “Let's call her something we can all agree on, then.  How about – Marianna?”

Marianna?  Well... I couldn't really think of any reason why not.  “I suppose so.  But how did you come up with that?”

Monotone grinned at me.  “There's an art to naming characters,” she said.  “Marianna is a lovely name, and it's a nice contraction of Maria Susanna.”

Oh. 

“So that's our main character,” Hyperbole said briskly.  “Now we need a female sidekick to be the narrative voice.  A Servant with a Secret, as it were.”

I was confused.  “What secret?”

“Doesn't matter.  She just needs to have one.  Keeps her interesting.  Let's call her something like Lisa.”

“Why Lisa?”

“It's pronounceable, and everybody knows about that girl whose first name was Mona and her middle name was Lisa, and it's a popular name even now, so lots of readers named Lisa will identify.  That's why I would have suggested Madison, or Alexis, or Paige, or Zoe, but I didn't think you'd go along with it.”

She was right.  I wouldn't have gone along with it.  All right, we had a main character named Marianna and her trusty sidekick Lisa, so it looked like we were about ready to get started.

But first I did have one request.  No, make that a demand.

“I want the history to be right,” I said.  They both looked at me like I had completely lost it.  “I want room for author's notes, and I don't want any anachronisms or wild inaccuracies.  Period.”

Both of my muses looked thoroughly alarmed at that.  But the ever-resourceful Hyperbole rallied quickly.

“I know,” she said.  “We'll personify your Author Notes.  We'll throw in a character who will act as a sort of history policewoman and keep everyone on the straight and narrow.  How will that be?”

“Um – okay, I guess.”  I had never heard of this, but maybe it would work.  “We can call her something like, say, Ystoria.” 

Monotone stroked her chin thoughtfully.  “Ystoria.  I think I could live with that.  It sounds exotic,” she said. 

With that settled, we went to work.  First task was to draw up a list of Essential Points – things that simply had to be there, though not in any particular order. 

Hours later, exhausted but satisfied, we had come up with the following list:

1. Heroine must dress as a boy for extended periods and get away with it.
2. Heroine must be nobly born. (See #6 for one possibility.)  Also nubile.  Noble and nubile.
3. Heroine must be appalled to learn that a marriage has been arranged for her.
4. Underlying history must be explained by the heroine's kindly tutor (alternatively, by her mother), in no more than two paragraphs.
5. Heroine must have learned a traditionally masculine art/craft/skill from her indulgent father (or father-figure) when she was a child.
6. At least one instance of someone's parentage not being what it seems.
7. Heroine must do a self-inventory while looking into a mirror; must have either violet or green eyes.
8. Heroine must find herself in a dangerous situation, grab a weapon, and discover that she's extremely gifted at using it.
9. Must include lots of sex.  [Here we had a brief debate about whether the first sexual experience had to be Vesuvian and stellar, or could be brutal and unpleasant.  We all agreed that sex with the right partner would have to be measured on the Richter scale.]
10. Villain(s) must be extremely non-PC.
11. Need at least one horrific childbirth scene.
12. Heroine must be headstrong.

At that last, Hyperbole, now wildly excited, shouted, “And willful!”

“And feisty!  And independent!  And enlightened and progressive!” Monotone added.

“And stubborn!  And empowered!  And self-actualized!  And tech-savvy!”

“Tech-savvy?” I asked, incredulous.

Hyperbole blushed.  “Sorry, I got carried away.  But everything else stands.”

***

Please note:  however it may sound, I really don't have it in for books about Tudors, or even anything called The Queen's Whatever, or any book that incorporates some of the clichés listed above.  (If it incorporates all of them, that's another matter.)   My own WIP contains at least one item on that list, and I am currently reading and enjoying a book about Tudors (The Queen's Exiles, by Barbara Kyle, which so far contains no clichés whatsoever).  

But.  The 1st 10 pages on an Amazon search under the category "Historical fiction" yield no fewer than 10 titles beginning "The Queen's" and another 23 books with "Queen" in the title, not counting names of specific queens.  So there is a trend here.  In a quirky, fun little book called Science Made Stupid, author Tom Weller hints that lots of places seem to get named "The Devil's [whatever]" - including such unlikely examples as "Devil's Hot Tub State Park," "Devil's Tax Shelter National Monument," "Devil's Torque Wrench Wilderness Area," "Devil's Three-Martini Lunch National Forest," "Devil's Grant Proposal National Wasteland," and "Devil's Running Gag Useless Area."  I'm beginning to think historical fiction titles are a bit like that.

Join me next time for The Story.  (Dante's Banker's Wife?  The May Queen's Dilemma?)

Medieval Moms III: The Sinner

Francesca da Rimini, the third woman in my Medieval Moms series, was a sinner.  (Last week was the saint:  see here.)

How do we know she was a sinner?  We know because Dante assigned her to the Inferno, to the circle of the lustful, where she was to be eternally buffeted about (along with her lover) in a raging whirlwind as payback for her adultery with her brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta.

Unusually, we only know about Francesca and her sin because of Dante.  There's no mention of them at all in anything written before Dante wrote his Commedia.  But she and Paolo were Dante's contemporaries, and their story captured his imagination, and then Dante commentators (including Dante's sons) filled in some of the details for us.  Still later, two chroniclers of the Romagna region picked up the story.  And finally, Giovanni Boccaccio took it on, adding some original elements that tended to provoke sympathy for the lovers, and from there the story went viral, in a pre-internet sort of way.

Especially throughout the 19th century, stories, plays, operas, tone poems, and numerous other treatments of the tale proliferated.  Wikipedia lists no fewer than 20 (!) operas based on Francesca and Paolo (don't worry, I won't include all the YouTube links).

Sergei Rachmaninov and his Paolo and Francesca

Rodin's famous sculpture The Kiss was originally entitled Francesca da Rimini:

So what, exactly, happened to cause such a (belated) fuss?

Francesca was the daughter of Guido Minore da Polenta, aka Guido il Vecchio, who was lord of Ravenna in 1275, the year he gave his teenaged daughter in marriage to Giovanni (called “Gianciotto,” or “John the Lame”) Malatesta, the second son of that Malatesta da Verucchio who was to become the first lord of Rimini (a position Gianciotto never achieved).  This amounted to a powerful political alliance between two prominent families of the Romagna. 

So far, so good.  Gianciotto was probably well into his thirties, maybe close to forty, and Francesca was sixteen, but that wasn't unusual.  He and Francesca in due course had a daughter, who they called – rather ironically – Concordia.  (They may also have had a son, Francesco, who died in infancy.) 

However, Gianciotto also had an exceedingly attractive younger brother called Paolo.  Paolo was himself married, to the unfortunately-named Orabile Beatrice, countess of Ghiaggiolo, and they were the parents of two children, one of whom was named Uberto.

An attraction grew between Paolo and Francesca, resulting in a clandestine adulterous affair.  The various dramatic treatments of their liaison differ on the details; some suggest that it was at the very moment of the couple's first kiss that Gianciotto burst into Francesca's chamber and skewered them both on his sword, whereas other accounts suggest that the affair trundled along uneventfully for almost a decade before Gianciotto committed his act of combined fratricide and uxoricide.

Later writers introduced new elements:  a telltale servant; Paolo's attempt to escape, until his clothing got hung up on something and he found himself stuck in the trap door; Francesca's attempt to protect her lover, which resulted in her death (which in this version her husband did not intend) as well as Paolo's; and the idea that Francesca believed she was marrying Paolo (perhaps a wedding by proxy?) and fell in love with him, only learning later that she was stuck with his much less appealing brother.

Dante, though, who in his telling is profoundly moved at the plight of the lovers he encounters in the Inferno, tells us, as only he can, how their love began, here in Francesca's words:

  We were reading one day, for pleasure, of
Lancelot, how Love beset him; we were alone and
without any suspicion.

  Many times that reading drove our eyes
together and turned our faces pale; but one point
alone was the one that overpowered us.

  When we read that the yearned-for smile was
kissed by so great a lover, he, who will never be
separated from me,

  kissed my mouth all trembling.  Galeotto was the
book and he who wrote it:  that day we read there no
further.”

Dante Alighieri, Inferno 5:127-138, trans. Robert M. Durling

Dante may have met Paolo when Dante was 17 and Paolo was in Florence serving as Capitano del Popolo (one of two leading governmental positions that the medieval Italian communes always gave to “foreigners,” or people from other cities, in an attempt to avoid local factionalism).

Dante scholar Teodolinda Barolini observes of Dante's version that “he took a story that was notorious enough for him to have heard it, but that eventually would have been lost, and made it a story that has never been forgotten.” 

But what happened to Concordia?  She was probably no more than nine years old when her mother died.  For that matter, what became of Paolo's children?  Here the story gets even murkier.

Gianciotto remarried, to Zambrosina, daughter of Tebaldello de' Zambrasi, of Faenza, and they had five children:  Tino, Guidoni, Ramberto, Margherita, and Rengarduccia.  Gianciotto's father Malatesta, Concordia's grandfather, wrote in his will in 1311 that Concordia and her half-siblings should amicably resolve any issues relating to the distribution of Francesca's dowry.

This raises some interesting questions.  A woman's dowry was her own to control, as a rule, but perhaps Francesca left no will.  Or, perhaps because of her adultery, her husband's family felt justified in claiming the dowry.  It did not revert to her family, though had she been guiltless and unjustly murdered by her spouse, her birth family might possibly have taken legal steps to reclaim it.  In any case it is hard to understand why the children of Gianciotto's second marriage should have had a share in it at all, but I've not been able to learn anything more about it.  It does appear that the murder did not destroy that all-important alliance between the two families – an alliance that was also cemented by the marriage of Francesca's brother Bernardino to Maddalena, younger sister of Gianciotto and Paolo.

Some say Concordia ended her days in a convent of Poor Clares, Sant'Arcangelo di Romagna, but others say there is nothing to support this.  We just don't know.  But Concordia was raised in the palace where her father killed her mother, raised not only with her half-siblings, but with her cousins, the sons of her uncle (who was also her mother's lover).  It can't have been easy – perhaps not for any of them. 

There is one more sad (and confusing) story pertaining to the next generation.  Unfortunately, we have two opposing versions.  In the first, Paolo's son Ramberto, many years later, avenged his father by murdering Gianciotto's son Uberto at a banquet. 

But wait – haven't we seen already that Ramberto was Gianciotto's son, not Paolo's?  And Uberto was Paolo's son, not Gianciotto's?

That brings us to the second version.  In this one, Ramberto is indeed Gianciotto's son, and history repeats itself when he slays his cousin Uberto, who was Paolo's son, at a banquet.

The first version comes from Wikipedia.  The second comes from Dr. Teodolinda Barolini, Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University, multiply-published and distinguished Dante scholar. 

Guess which one I'm going to believe? 

This picture is here because the instrument at Francesca's feet is a portative organ, or organetto.  I play one of those too, so I couldn't resist.  I will, however, resist the temptation to discuss which of the brothers has the longer, um, sword.

Francesca's organetto/my organetto

Before we leave Francesca, let me share with you a few more of her words to Dante, again in Robert Durling's translation:

  Love, which is swiftly kindled in the noble heart,
seized this one for the lovely person that was taken
from me; and the manner still injures me.

  Love, which pardons no one loved from loving in
return, seized me for his beauty so strongly that, as
you see, it still does not abandon us.

… There is no greater pain than to
remember the happy time in wretchedness.

All images in this post are in the public domain.

Medieval Moms II: The Saint

Reliquary of Beata Umiliana de' Cerchi, Museo di Santa Croce, Florence

The Blessed Umiliana dei Cerchi, speaking of her children:

O how blessed they would be if they were to die so unstained, still bearing their virginity.  If it is God's will, I would prefer that they die and go to glory rather than live, lest at some time they offend God and so lose a portion of the eternal inheritance. - quoted in Carol Lansing's book The Florentine Magnates

Umiliana's daughter Regale (imagined response):

Um... Mom?

Have you ever heard anyone say, "My mother is a saint"?  It's just possible that might not be an entirely good thing, from a child's point of view. 

(Most sources list Umiliana as "Beata," or "Blessed," rather than as "Saint," but I've seen it both ways.  I'm writing this post as her feast day, May 19, approaches, 768 years after her death in 1246.)

So who was this lady?  Umiliana (aka Humiliana, Emiliana) was born around 1219, into a wealthy Florentine family.  The Cerchi were bankers, influential in Florentine politics and becoming ever more so (they were to become the main opposition to the family of last week's blog topic, Tessa Donati - read about her here).

Cerchi coat of arms, Santa Maria Novella (Florence)

At sixteen, Umiliana married a member of the Buonaguisi family (we don't know his name).  Shortly after her marriage, and probably under the influence of her sister-in-law Ravenna, she rejected “the pomp and adornment of the world.”  She would not paint her face; she cut off the bottom of a beautiful new tunic her husband had given her, made sleeves out of the cloth, and sold them, giving the money to the poor.  She collected her old clothes and her husband's and gave those to the poor, and when she had cloth to make sheets, she made them shorter than usual and gave the rest of the cloth away.

She was also said to give away “all the linen which she found in her husband's chamber.”  I don't know whether that meant bed linens only, or if she also gave away the unfortunate man's shirts and underwear.  She even removed feathers from the marital mattress, to make a pallet to give to a hospital.

She was contented with coarse food, and “took the food out of her mouth, reseasoned it, and gave it to the poor.”  (I know – yuck.  Let's agree not to take that literally, shall we?)  She also stayed up late at night to prepare food for the poor.  She and Ravenna would distribute it the next day, bringing along servants to help carry.

Needless to say, her husband and his family were not gruntled about all of this.  (At least the male members of the family were not; Umiliana seems to have had a wonderful rapport with their womenfolk, many of whom testified to her sanctity after her death.)

As Umiliana's biographer, Fra Vito of Cortona, tells it, her husband and his male relatives (and later her own male relatives) opposed her efforts, every step of the way.

But can you blame her husband?  His young trophy wife is running around in unfashionably short clothes; she's giving away his underwear, stoking the cookfire and cooking all night, and his bed is short-sheeted and missing a lot of feathers.  This was probably not what he bargained for.  As one historian said, “Umiliana did not so much reject marriage as subvert it.”

But we wanted to look at Umiliana as a mother.

Her husband died after a few years of marriage and the birth of two daughters.  Umiliana spent the next year in her family's home, always increasing her charitable efforts, to the displeasure of her husband's brothers, and then she moved back to her father's house.

Her children stayed behind.  Medieval Florentine society believed that's where they belonged as part of their father's lineage.

Did Umiliana have any choice in the matter?  Some men made provision in their wills for their widows to stay in the family home as long as they remained chaste, but we don't know if that happened in Umiliana's case.  Did her husband's family become exasperated and order her out (fearing, perhaps, for their underwear)?  Did she choose to leave?  Did her father, who wanted to use her in another dynastic marriage, insist?

We don't know.  We do know that she left the girls behind, probably in the care of her beloved sister-in-law Ravenna.  We know that members of her birth family tried in vain to persuade her to agree to marry again.  We know that she wanted to enter a convent of Poor Clares at Monticelli, but she was not accepted, so she took up residence in a cell in her father's tower and continued her charitable efforts as a Franciscan tertiary from there (attended by servants from her father's household).

Cerchi tower (shorter than it would have been then)

We also know that Umiliana's father, Oliviero dei Cerchi, reclaimed the right to her dowry, which she claimed he did by deceiving her so that now she would live in her father's home “as a servant, not as a daughter.”  The lack of control over her dowry severely limited how much she could give away to the poor (and some historians believe that Oliviero was merely trying to prevent her from giving away what must have been a considerable sum of money).  Lack of dowry may also have been why she was rejected by the convent – while the Poor Clares espoused poverty, the fact remained that most of the nuns in that Florentine religious house were from wealthy and powerful families, and entered with a dowry.

Umiliana did love children.  She had visions of the Christ child; she once tried to capture the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove to give to her little nephew; she visited a sick boy and voluntarily took his suffering upon herself.

It is said that a demon tried to tempt her out of a vow of silence by showing her visions of various kin lying dead, which would require her to mourn them vocally, and that one such vision was of her two daughters lying on a pallet at her feet, but she successfully resisted this temptation.

And one telling incident:  her daughter Regale (or Rigale) was visiting Umiliana in her tower room one day shortly after terce (mid-morning) when the child was struck dumb, then fell down as if dead, turning very white.  Umiliana, distraught, tried to revive her, but perceiving no breath, she believed her daughter had died.  Fra Vito tells us she feared the trouble this would bring down on her head when her husband's relatives learned of it (emphasis mine), so she prayed to an image of the Virgin.  Then a beautiful child appeared and made the sign of the cross over the little girl, who sat up, fully conscious and completely well.

Santa Margherita dei Cerchi (church in Florence under the patronage of the Cerchi and other neighborhood families in the 13th century)

Rudolph Bell, in his book Holy Anorexia, claims that Umiliana's inlaws believed she was not a fit mother.  Yet they did permit the child to visit her -- unless that was done solely on Ravenna's initiative, which seems possible.  As we have seen, the fact that Umiliana left the girls with her husband's family may well not have been her choice.

Was she as lacking in human feeling for her daughters as some of these quotes and anecdotes seem to suggest?  I wouldn't be too sure.  Everything we read is filtered through her Franciscan biographer, who was trying to depict the life of an urban Franciscan tertiary as he saw it (and this was still early days for the Franciscan order, which was still establishing itself in Florence – Umiliana was seven years old when St. Francis died).

But at the hearings about her sanctity, she was supported not only by three Franciscan friars, but also by 30 women, many of whom were members of her own or her husband's family.  I find it hard to believe that would have been the case if they had seen her as an inadequate mother.  Once again, we are peering far into the past, without much information to work with, and we need to be very careful not to judge people of another time by the standards of our own.

We do not know what eventually became of Regale and her sister.


Next week:  Medieval Moms III:  The Sinner.


Images in this post:  Reliquary photo is licensed to Sailko via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons. So are the photos of the Cerchi coat of arms, the Cerchi tower, and the church of Santa Margherita dei Cerchi.  Other images are in the public domain.

Medieval Moms I: One of the "Ill-Famed"

This could have been a block party in the Sesto dello Scandalo, Florence

Corso Donati's mom was quite a lady.  She lived in turbulent times, and the large and powerful family she married into had certainly made its own substantial contribution to that turbulence, with plenty more to come.

The Donati and their rivals the Cerchi lived in the same small neighborhood in Florence, those last decades of the 13th century.  Rivalries and festering hatreds exploded into violence with such regularity there that the cluster of houses and towers officially called Porta San Piero was known informally as the "Sesto dello Scandalo."  (And the Donati were known as the "Malefami," or Ill-Famed; hence the title of this post.)  Contessa, called Tessa, could have been that lady in the picture about to drop a large rock on some poor guy who looks like he has enough problems already.

The neighborhood today (with two Donati towers still dominating it)

We don't know Tessa's birth family, unfortunately.  We do know that she married messer Simone Donati ("messer" indicates that he was a knight) and was mother to at least three sons and two daughters. 

Well, actually we don't even know that.  Recently some scholars have discovered a tomb in the excavations of Florence's old cathedral, Santa Reparata (under the present cathedral) indicating the resting place of one Ioanna, wife of Simone Donati.  But since we don't know how long Tessa lived, Ioanna could have been a second wife, or she could have been wife to a different Simone, since the name recurred in every generation of this large family.

Assuming Tessa was, as most believe, mother to Corso and his brothers and sisters, she must have had her hands full.  Corso was to become one of the most powerful and dangerous men in a city full of powerful and dangerous men.  Florentine chronicler Dino Compagni was to describe him thus:

A knight in the mold of Catiline the Roman, but more cruel; noble of blood, handsome of body, a charming speaker, adorned with good breeding, subtle of intellect, with his mind always set on evildoing...  he lived dangerously and died reprehensibly.  He was full of malicious thoughts, cruel and astute.

Corso (on horse)

But today we want to concentrate on Tessa herself, not on her frequently problematic offspring.  What do we know of this woman, who lived so long ago? 

Tessa had another son, Forese, who was a good friend of Dante's.  So good, in fact, that the two of them created a poetic conversation of sorts (a dispute, an exchange of insults, presumably all in good fun) called a tenzone.  In this extraordinary and scurrilous exchange they accuse each other of everything from gluttony to poverty to sexual inadequacy to cowardice to thievery.  In one of Dante's verses, he begins like this:

Bicci novel, figliuol di non so cui,
(s'i' non ne domandasse monna Tessa)

"Bicci novel," or "Bicci Junior," was Forese's nickname.  The phrase means "Bicci Junior, son of we don't know who (unless someone asks monna Tessa."

Ahem.  I guess it shows that insulting the other guy's mother is a practice that goes back a long way.

Forese, as Dante finds him in Purgatory (Gustave Doré, 1832-1883)

But that's not the only account of Tessa that survives.  The Lucchese writer Giovanni Sercambi, 1348-1424, wrote a collection of 155 short stories, one of which told a tale of monna Tessa.  His life did not overlap with hers, but he was recording stories that lived in popular memory from less than a century earlier.

It seems that Tessa and her companions were walking along the street near what is now Orsanmichele.  Tessa was an attractive woman, married to an important man, and many people greeted her honorably.  Among them, however, was one man called Bisticcio, who said (and I must thank the eminent Dante scholar and very good sport Christopher Kleinhenz for help with this translation):

"Hey!  Maybe I'll see you in the bordello, so that anyone who would want to sleep with you, be he a townsman or a country dweller, could do so by paying the price."

Tessa heard him.  She told her companions to stop; she turned and faced him.  "Bisticcio," she said, "why do you insult me?  No matter who of you might want to come to bed with me, you could not have me except by paying top dollar."

And then she left, courteously.  Bisticcio was ashamed, for he didn't think the lady had heard him.

I suppose the modern version would be something like, "Hey, babe, how about it?"  "Forget it - you can't afford me."

On the strength of these two accounts, Giosuè Carducci, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1906, sniffed that Tessa "was no Cornelia."  (Cornelia was a favorite example of the noble virtues of Roman womanhood.)

Cornelia, being virtuous

 Many moms have to put up with squabbling children.  But not every mom has to deal with her son (Corso) plucking her daughter (Piccarda) out of a convent and dragging her off kicking and screaming to be married, against her will, to his political ally.   Or, for that matter, Corso driving her other daughter (Ravenna) into a convent, with her children, to escape Corso's marriage plans for her (and his plans for acquiring her recently-inherited fortune) after she was widowed.  That one became a tiresome legal battle between Corso and the nunnery, and it went on for years.  He had no legal right to any of that money, yet somehow he wound up with half of it.  One wonders what Tessa thought of it all.  Did she take sides?  Was she ever tempted to give Corso a time out?

Removing Piccarda from the convent (Lorenzo Toncini, 1802-1884)

During the long years of the Guelf-Ghibelline rift, Tessa endured the pain of exile more than once, relocating with her children to another city, not knowing whether she would ever see Florence again.  Her fortunes fluctuated with the fortunes of her family's political party (Guelf, and later when the Guelfs split into Black and White factions, Black Guelf).  History is silent about any role she may have played in the city's struggles, yet I can't shake the feeling that the woman who could stand up for herself in the street (and could inspire a ribald insult from no less a man than Dante) must have been a player.  Somehow I doubt that she just sat around meekly waiting to see what would happen next.

She was married to a man who, while serving as chief magistrate in another city, was said to have imprisoned a man and put him to the torture, falsely accusing him of a crime, because he wanted to have his way with the man's daughter.  Did Tessa shrug it off?  Was hers a real partnership, or did she and her husband lead separate lives?  We don't know.

 And we really don't know anything about Tessa as a mother.  But Corso was married three times, and while we don't know the name of his first wife, we do know that the second and the third were both also named Tessa.  Oedipus complex, or coincidence?  You decide.


Photo of neighborhood in Florence is licensed to Sailko via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, via Wikimedia Commons.

Meet My Main Character (Guest post by Sophia duBay)

Statue of St. Catherine of Siena, in Rome

This week I'd like to welcome one more guest poster in the "Meet My Main Character" blog hop.  Sophia duBay is working on a novel based on the life of Saint Catherine of Siena, a novel I'm very much looking forward to reading when it's complete.  Its working title is World Between Worlds.  Though our time periods differ slightly, we are both avid students of Italian history, and it has been a real pleasure exchanging ideas and information with Sophia. 

 To whet our appetites for the book, she's here to tell us something about Saint Catherine of Siena.  Let's welcome author Sophia duBay, whose biographical sketch follows:

Sophia duBay's passion for historical accuracy and the drive to remain true to Caterina of Siena's soul has led her to travel extensively to the places most prominent in her main character's life. A scholar of medieval history, she and her husband, Brian, have journeyed to Siena, Florence, Rome, and Avignon in a quest to capture the essence of the 14th century and the spirit of Caterina. If you'd like updates on World Between Worlds or would like to contact Sophia, she can be reached through her Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/CreateSoulSpace

Sophia duBay

What is the name of your character?  Is he/she fictional or a historical person?

Caterina of Siena, better known by the English version of her name, Catherine, is a historical person of the 14th century. In 1461 she was canonized a saint, and in 1939 she, along with Francis of Assisi, was named co-patron saint of Italy. In 1970 she (along with Teresa of Avila) was named the first female Doctor of the Church for her contribution to spiritual understanding and wisdom.


When and where is the story set?

The story is set between the years of 1362 and 1380, and takes place in various cities in Italy (mainly Siena, but also Florence, Pisa, and Rome), as well as a few scenes in Avignon.


What should we know about him/her?

During a time of class division and predictable gender roles, Caterina steps outside the bounds of what is expected of her to refuse marriage and instead follow a bold path of her own design. Through teaching, writing, travel, and being a political spokeswoman, Caterina struggles to reform the corruption of her times by commanding senators, bishops, emperors, and even two popes. A social advocate, Caterina risks the accusation of heresy and the torture of public execution to work tirelessly "for the benefit of souls."

Portrait of St. Caterina, Basilica of San Domenico, Siena (Andrea di Vanni)

What is the main conflict?  What messes up his/her life?

Caterina lives in what historian Barbara Tuchman called “the calamitous 14th century.” The entire region of Tuscany is victim to nearly constant mercenary raids, internal revolts centered on class division, and a decadent papacy gone awry. Political chaos runs rampant, while spiritual distortion mingles indiscriminately with true devotion. Yet in this time of international wars and continuous plagues, of hatred between neighboring cities and the overreaching corruption of the lush Avignon papacy, Caterina’s petite presence speaks more boldly than the shouts of those around her.


What is the personal goal of the character?

“Never allow yourself to rest” is Caterina’s motto. Known not for her political riches or military might but for her calm and other-worldly ability to command queens, mercenaries and even popes, Caterina is accused of being both saint and heretic, yet she must overcome the inner turmoil of self-doubt to follow the path she’s convinced God is demanding of her—to bring peace and a glimmer of hope to an apocalyptic world.


What is the title of the book?

This novel is still in draft form, so the title may change, but at the moment it’s tentatively being called World Between Worlds.

***

Many thanks to Sophia for this very interesting post.  I know all of us wish her every success with her book, and I hope that one day she'll share some of her thoughts about research here in another guest post.


And after this string of delightful guest posts, next week it's back to me, in the first of three posts about three unusual medieval moms, inspired by Mother's Day.